Insecure Security

I laughed out loud today as I came across an article in The Economist that quoted the soon-to-be Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi promising to lead "the most honest, most open and most ethical Congress in history." This, ironically, came out around the same time that Pelosi's preferences for Chariman of the House Intelligence Committee were released. According to a Washington Post Article,

"The panel's ranking Democrat is her fellow Californian Jane Harman -- smart and hardworking but also abrasive, ambitious and, in Pelosi's estimation, insufficiently partisan on the committee. So Pelosi...has made clear that she doesn't intend to name Harman to the chairmanship...next in line is Florida Rep. Alcee Hastings. In 1989, after being acquitted in a criminal trial, Hastings was stripped of his position as a federal judge -- impeached by the House in which he now serves and convicted by the Senate -- for conspiring to extort a $150,000 bribe in a case before him, repeatedly lying about it under oath and manufacturing evidence at his trial."

Nancy Pelosi, advocate for open and honest government, wants to hand over vast amounts of responsibility to someone who may have the potential to be bought at a time when we have troops stationed controversially around the world. And for what reason? She simply does not care for the less than partisan politics of the ranking member. In some ways I feel that divided government is good, or at least it has produced good results under strong leadership. I would not qualify Nancy Pelosi's partisan antics as strong leadership, and I certainly do not have great expectations for her tenure.

Genocide Against the White Man

Although you probably haven't seen this unless you happen to be a You Tube fanatic, during a speech at Howard University Law School, former NC State University professor Kamau Kambon recently called for the extermination of all white people from this planet. Apparently this is the latest solution to past, present, and future racism advocated by some of the more radical members of the racist black movement. (This is not to say that the black community is racist; I am merely referring to the minority whom this applies to.) Racism is an unqualified bad for society, and I feel that this fact is nearly impossible for a rational person to dispute. However, regardless of previous wrongs served against the black community in America, if one professes to be against racism, then one must be against all forms of racism. This includes reverse discrimination that arises from quotas, affirmative action, and more radical philosophies that refute equality before the law in favor of blatant minority preference for reparations. However, I feel that one of the most alarming aspects of this speech had nothing whatsoever to do with the ideas professed by this misguided individual. What does not make sense to me is how little attention this story has gotten from the major news outlets. I can only imagine what the response would have been had a racist white person expressed similar sentiments. Racism is racism, and all manifestations of this disease should be treated accordingly.

Democracy- Good in Theory?

When discussing the relevance of Cummunism as a system of government, people almost always defer to the argument that Communism looked good on paper but has failed in reality. This argument has become so universally accepted that it has essentially discredited the viability of Communism as a legitimate form of government. My fear is that as the United States moves further from its roots in republicanism toward the instability of populism, democracy will go the way of Communism as a system that was good in theory, but that could simply not withstand the fleeting passions and misdirection of the masses that ran it into the ground.